Abstract:

Electoral laws determine membership in the demos, that is, in the set of people who can participate in elections and referenda via voting and candidacy rights. As such, they are of crucial importance for democratic inclusion and electoral democracy. Based on information of the qualitative database on electoral rights, the ELECLAW indicators measure the degree of inclusion of voting rights (VOTLAW) and candidacy rights (CANLAW) for three different categories of potential voters: resident citizens (RC), non-resident citizens (NR), and non-citizen residents (NC). The current version – ELECLAW 5.1 – includes the 28 Member States of the European Union as well as Switzerland based on the electoral laws in 2013 and 2015, the Americas and Oceania based on electoral laws in 2015. For previous versions see the archive of data and the accompanying explanatory notes.